


Something Left to Protect

by MikoGalatea



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, Pre-Timeskip | Academy Phase (Fire Emblem: Three Houses), allusions to grief and discrimination, references to Dedue's past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:42:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 450
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MikoGalatea/pseuds/MikoGalatea
Summary: Dedue sees the flowers from Duscur in the greenhouse for the first time.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	Something Left to Protect

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for monthlysupergo's February 2020 Themed Prompt Table challenge on Dreamwidth, using Table 3 - Seasons and the prompt "Spring", with Fire Emblem: Three Houses as my claimed fandom.

_So there are flowers from Duscur here as well..._

It was not something Dedue had expected to see when he first visited the greenhouse in the spring of his year at the Officers Academy. He knew there would be a variety of plants and flowers to tend to, of course, and he had also heard in advance that there were some rare species as well; even so, seeing flowers from his old homeland among them still came as a surprise to him.

_I thought they had all been destroyed, the same as everything else._ Yet the flowers were before him all the same; the state of their leaves and petals showed that they were not in the best of health, undoubtedly because they hadn't been receiving the correct care, but they were _alive_. Something of Duscur other than himself was still _alive_.

They were also the same flowers his younger sister used to love. He thought back to his sister marvelling at the sight of entire fields of these beautiful flowers in bloom, to her bringing a handful of them back home with them, and to the two of them helping their mother prepare dinner for the family once they were home.

Now they were all gone. His sister, his mother, and his father as well. His home. The fields. Everything except for himself, perhaps a few other survivors he had yet to see, and the sickly flowers in front of him.

The flowers were not beyond saving. Dedue understood them well; he knew that with the proper care and attention he could provide, they could be brought back to health and made just as beautiful again as the ones he remembered from better days.

That, in itself, made him glad to have started attending this academy along with Prince Dimitri. With the cruel whispers he'd overheard from students and Church members alike even in his first few days here, he had expected his time here to be something he had to endure for the Prince's sake on at least one level. _But if I had not come here,_ he thought, _then I would not have seen the flowers. They would almost certainly have died in that case._

With that, he made a vow to himself.

_I will not let these flowers die. I shall nurse them back to health and make sure they get the care they need, and I will ensure no harm that may come to them ever does so. I will do that for as long as I'm here._

It was something left of his homeland he could still protect, after all. It was the least he could do for everyone and everything he had lost.


End file.
